Survival of Thomas Ford, The (3 page)

Jimmy was in his bedroom, on his knees in front of the large round mirror above the chest of drawers that had been his grandmother’s. He had a smaller mirror in his raised left hand. He was using the smaller mirror to get a view of his profile in the large mirror. There it was. The hooked nose, the birdlike eyebrows, even the texture of his black hair, as though there was something featherlike in its weave. Tears stung Jimmy’s eyes as he faced the facts again. Some kind of surgery might be possible, he knew that.

He put the mirror down and walked across to his bed in the room’s corner. On the wall, beside his pillow, Jimmy had taped the newspaper article with the colour picture of the woman from the car that had gone into the loch.

Mrs Lea Ford, 35. The article told about how she had been a local chiropractor. Jimmy didn’t know what that was. But then the article said that she had recently stopped doing that, to open a small art gallery in the city, concentrating on international folk art. Jimmy had been astonished at this, because not long before the day of the crash he had found himself drawn in off the street, into that gallery, where he had walked around fascinated for an hour by the carvings and statues and paintings on sale there. He had even tried to tell his mother later, about the rough and violent works he’d been looking at, in what used to be a record shop on the corner of a busy street.

Jimmy lay on his bed and stared up at the woman’s luscious brown hair, her green eyes. After six weeks of lying there, ritually absorbed in worship of the dead woman from the car, Jimmy was surprised to still feel the tingle in him. He was just about to undo the button on his jeans and pay tribute to her once again, when he heard his mother’s voice call up the stairs,

“Jimmy! Robert’s here for you.”

Jimmy sighed and shook his head. He punched the wall, just beside Mrs Ford’s lush hairdo. He heard Robert’s heavy, monotonous tread on the old stairs. Jimmy whistled and sat up suddenly on the bed, spinning his hips so he faced the door as Robert’s steps stopped. Three polite taps on the wooden door.

“Jimmy, it’s Robert.”

Jimmy shook his head.

“Come in!” he shouted.

Robert’s large frame and square, worried face appeared in the doorway. Robert focused on Jimmy’s hard stare, the black eyes, then he looked up, over Jimmy’s shoulder, at the newspaper clipping stuck to the wall, the resplendent colour photo of Mrs Lea Ford, gallery owner.

“Jimmy, man, should you no take that down now eh?”

Jimmy sniffed and got up from the bed explosively. He walked over to the window and leaned against the wall. He stared out over the fields at the back of the house.

“It was on the news tonight, Jimmy. That man’s woken up in the hospital. Thomas Ford. It said the police had gotten information from him about the crash. It didn’t say, Jimmy, but do you think he’ll have seen us and the car and described it like? Or did it happen too fast maybe eh?”

Jimmy whistled. He was watching a young rabbit that had just got the courage up to step out of the hedge at the road-side of the field. It was looking all round itself.

“Jimmy, what if he got a really good look at us though? If you see folk, even for a second, you can get a picture of them that sticks in your head for your whole life. He could identify us.”

“Maybe.”

“You said that wouldn’t happen though, Jimmy, you said he’d never wake up. I’m frightened Jimmy. I nearly told my mum last night.”

Jimmy blinked and looked away from the rabbit. He walked over to Robert, grinning widely.

“Come on, that man will no remember us. No way! Anyway, if he did, so what? It was just an accident. We overtook at a corner, we didn’t stop at the scene of the accident. So what?”

“No, Jimmy, it would be death by reckless driving, and I’m an accessory.”

Jimmy laughed.

“Fucking right you’re an accessory. You’re a fucking tool, so you are. Come on, let’s go for a drive.”

The red Volvo shoved its headlighted nose through the early evening country lanes leading away from Jimmy’s parents’ big house.

“Aye,” said Jimmy, “we’d better not be out too late man. My dad was cracking up at me for no doing enough work lately. He’s starting a new build tomorrow, for some cardiologist, got some architect up from
London
to design an eco-friendly thing for the side of a hill. My dad says it’s going to be some sight from the road. I might as well turn up tomorrow, give a hand. You fancy a day’s work Robert?”

“No, Jimmy, my medication isn’t working right just now. I have to be careful not to exert myself.”

Jimmy whistled through his teeth, slapped the steering wheel.

“A day’s work would probably sort you out fine man,” said Jimmy.

Robert blinked, staring directly forward. At the edge of the headlight’s beam, on the moor, a deer was illuminated for a moment, its head and antlers and shoulders, then the moor was empty space again, just a border for the Volvo to plough a course through.

“See that?” said Jimmy. “That’s dangerous eh? You need a four-by-four like my dad’s for out here man. Otherwise one of those things is going to walk in front one night and we’ll be written off along with the beast eh?”

Jimmy turned his head to stare at Robert hard.

In the town that was growing faster every year now, desperate to become a real city, they parked on the steep incline down from the castle, behind three Taxis. Jimmy reached into his jacket pocket and took out two Mars Bars. He passed one to Robert and began to unwrap his own. The big grin was on Jimmy’s face now, Robert saw, the mask-face that Jimmy always wore in public. Jimmy was leering out of the windscreen, at girls passing on the High Street below, tight-skirted and high-booted.

“Check that out eh?” said Jimmy. “Fuck’s sake man. They’ll all be going to G’s tonight eh? Do you fancy heading there?”

“Can’t afford it.”

“I’ll pay you in. You could work tomorrow eh, pay me back see?”

Robert sniffed, bit into his bar.

“Mrs Lea Ford,” said Jimmy. “Dead woman. See how the paper said she had that gallery place? I went in there one day man, some great stuff, from all over the world like. Carvings, statues. Really old things, it looked like.”

Robert felt sick. He had forgotten about the woman temporarily. Now the Mars Bar was paste in his mouth. His saliva was gone from fear. He knew he couldn’t cope with prison for being an accessory, if that is what they would do with him when they found out. No, he couldn’t even cope with a day’s work for Jimmy’s dad. Robert felt the sting of resentment at Jimmy, for involving him in it all.

“We could go round and visit Lorna eh? See what she’s up to,” said Jimmy.

Last time Robert had gone there with Jimmy, Jimmy and Lorna had vanished instantly into her bedroom. Robert had been left alone in front of the TV for three hours, hearing sounds coming from the bedroom.

“How about McDonald’s?” said Robert. “I wouldn’t mind a tea.”

They sat at a table by the window. Robert knew that anyone passing was going to notice Jimmy’s big grinning birdlike head, right at the glass. He watched passing tourists and drunks. Many of them did a long stare and gazed back at Jimmy as they passed the window. Robert sipped tea and looked around at the other people under the glaring fluorescent lights.

“Fucking Poles everywhere here now,” said Jimmy in a low voice. “When I went up to order the tea man, all Poles working here now. Same at my dad’s sites, half of them Poles now. What’s going on eh?”

Robert had noticed the Poles too. They stood out. If you ordered coffee from one they talked and smiled. Robert had always assumed the people in the town cafes were finding him personally objectionable, the way they were miserable when you ordered a drink. Now he realised it hadn’t been him necessarily. The new Poles had brought a level of politeness to the town/city or whatever this place was. Same thing when Robert had gone to the dentist’s and the Polish dental nurse who collected him from reception had made conversation. The locals had never bothered. Mind you, it had been disconcerting, being expected to make conversation on the way to the dental chair.

“Some of their birds are no bad though,” said Jimmy. “I’ll give them that.”

Jimmy made a face like he was a dog, then he worked his jaws like a bulldog or a Doberman, biting. Robert nodded back politely. Then Jimmy’s eyes flitted up over Robert’s shoulder. He had spotted something. Probably a woman. Robert didn’t bother turning to make sure.

Now Jimmy was laughing and shaking his head. He was staring down at the plastic table’s surface.

“What these people don’t understand, Robert, is that civilisation is only an idea.”

Jimmy looked up quickly at Robert. Robert blinked, but held Jimmy’s gaze.

“No,” said Jimmy. “It’s not even an idea. It’s just a fucking word.”

Jimmy sniffed.

“Anyway,” he said, “this man Thomas Ford won’t remember us. He won’t remember you. He won’t remember me. He won’t even remember the wife maybe, or who he used to be before he got fucked up in the loch. He’ll be in trauma, man. Post-trauma like Stallone in that film where he’s back from Viet Nam. Flashbacks and that. Well, trauma and flashbacks are no use in court, son. Thomas Ford eh? Who the fuck do you think he is eh? The fucking boogey man? He’s just some posh nonce with a sexy wife who had a wee accident. Thomas Ford’s no going to hurt you and he’s no going to hurt me, I’ll fucking guarantee you that.”

Robert wasn’t so sure. He felt an area of his heart turn cold as he looked at Jimmy’s dark eyes. Then, for some reason, the memory of the white butterfly came into Robert’s mind, the image of it on the windscreen, looking in at him through the glass. Something flexed and tensed in Robert’s brain, near the back of the skull, and for a moment he felt himself stretched out too tightly, caught between Jimmy’s gaze and the butterfly’s gaze, understanding neither.

Thomas Ford was sitting up in the hospital bed.

“I missed her funeral. I’ve missed two months of my life. I’m not missing any more,” he said.

“It’s a miracle you survived at all, Thomas,” said Finlay. “You’ve just got to take things slowly for now.”

Thomas snorted.

“No,” he said. “There’s no point to this. I’m going to get out today.”

“Come on, man, you’re not even steady enough to walk to the toilet alone yet. Give it a few more days.”

“The police don’t believe me Finlay, you know that? Questions, questions. You know what it is. It’s Alan and Jean, telling them that Lea was wanting to leave me. That detective they keep sending in here, McPherson, he just stares at me and asks these shitey questions, nipping and nipping away, with the female cop sitting watching me too, and all they’re thinking is the one thing they never say. They’re sure I drove that car into the loch on purpose. Eh? Like some final solution to marital breakdown. Fuck.”

Finlay frowned.

“You know, that cop McPherson was at the funeral, Tom. The woman was there too.”

Thomas stared over at Finlay, surprised.

“They’ve been talking a lot to Alan and Jean right enough,” said Finlay.

“Aye,” said Thomas. “I bet Alan and Jean have been talking to a lot of folk.”

“They’re destroyed by it, Tom. And you’ve got to give them credit, they’ve not breathed a word about anything being wrong with you and Lea, to the papers or the TV.”

Thomas sat up straighter in the bed. There was that dull pain deep in his side, behind the ribs. He felt sleepy suddenly, like a wave of soporific fog had just rolled in on him, from some humid ocean he had no name for. Finlay smiled.

“Right, Tom. I’m off for now. You’re no going anywhere today lad. Just lie back there awhile. I’ll come back in tomorrow.”

Thomas nodded and closed his eyes. He let his weight back down towards the pillow. He breathed out. In again. Soon, there was the red car bonnet just in front of him. Above it, the two heads, so familiar now. That dark-eyed bird-boy. Beside him the square-jawed passenger. Thomas swallowed as the car left the road. He heard Lea scream. Then the shock of the car striking the loch’s surface, that shock seemed worse now than the first time it happened. The impact travelled up Thomas’ spine, all down his nerves, to his eyes, the edges of his brain. Looking up now, out the windscreen, at the blue and grey sky. Turning to Lea, trying to help her get her seatbelt unfastened. But she is scratching at his hands, striking his hands with her own hands. He tries to shout at her to stop it, let him help, but his mouth is frozen, numb. Then the car dips in the water, the windscreen glass implodes. In the last instant of sunlight before everything becomes freezing blackness, Thomas stares at Lea as her eyes stare ahead, blind with terror. The terror had killed her just as surely as any of the rest of it.

“Suzy?”

“Hi Thomas. Here’s some apple juice, ok? I’ll put it down here on the table by your arm. You’ve slept a lot today. That’s a good sign.”

She was gone already, off to take some other invalid their sustenance. Now it was Thomas’ back that hurt most, probably just from being laid on so much. He looked over at the apple juice. The colour was nice, a nut brown. But he was asleep again, his eyes were staring at the liquid one moment, then he was asleep the next, air getting breathed out of himself in a long deflating sigh that seemed to be absorbed by the thin, starched pillow material.

His eyes opened and Lea was sitting on the plastic visitor’s chair at the side of his bed. She was sitting very upright, her shoulders drawn back as though consciously. She saw Thomas wake and she smiled.

“I’ve been watching you sleep,” she said.

“Lea?”

But he knew it was not her, not exactly. This was Lea from about two years earlier, before the troubles and arguments had begun. As she looked at him there was no shadow in her eyes, nothing withheld.

“Lea, I couldn’t undo your seatbelt. You kept knocking my hands away. You were terrified. I couldn’t calm you. I was terrified too. There was no time.”

She doesn’t speak. She nods. Thomas hears a familiar extended creaking sound. He knows it is the bin attached to the wall.

The bin lid is allowed to crash hard, dropped by a busy hand. Thomas’ eyes snap wide open. He breathes deep. He lets his eyes swivel to the right without moving his head. It’s Lorna, the cleaner.

“Sorry Thomas. I didn’t mean to let it drop that time. It’s a bad habit. Not much peace in this place.”

Thomas tried to smile.

“I was dreaming,” he said. “Just dreaming.”

“A nice dream?”

Thomas nodded. The girl raised her eyebrows conspiratorially, then turned away, headed to the next bed area. Thomas watched her back, her legs, then let his eyes focus up toward the high ceiling. He tried to see Lea there, but he couldn’t.